Simon’s cat, Pusheen, Bird Born and others: who is standing behind them

These illustrations have already captured not only world network, but our attention and affection too. Since they’ve been describing life situations, which experience their authors from day to day, we often recognize ourselves in the particular comics. With good humor, light sarcasm and original style illustrators implement their task: show that everyone face similar problems or fears (that’s why there daily-life-situations comics are so popular), and no use to worry over nothing — always the right solution is the easiest one.

So who is behind the fatty Pusheen cat, playful Simon, black horse Horace and other such lovely characters? You’ll meet them in this article.

Playful, sometimes naughty cat, that is painted and animated by Simon Tofield has already a huge fans’ club. In real life his creator has four cats and all of them gives him the limitless stream of inspiration and ideas. Simon has been drawing all his life and the nature-animal topic always has been the most interesting and desirable for him. He used to create basic flip-books and still all the videos are hand-animated in a traditional manner, frame by frame.

It usually takes between 12 and 25 drawings to create 1 second of a Simon’s Cat film. Each film can take 10-14 weeks to make, depending on the length, number of characters and complexity. The Simon’s cat is already a character of the series of cartoons, dozens of comics, two books and the most popular sticker among the car drivers. With the cat’s family the little team for creating animations is also growing.

Another cat, adored by millions of internet users, but totally different from the previous one. Here we rather recognize ourselves in the cat, than its owner. Claire Belton however also uses her cat as a prototype for her drown character. The name of the cat is inspired by the Irish word “puisin”, that means “kitten”.

In the beginning, there was Everyday-Cute, a comic by Claire Belton and Andrew Duff. Unfortunately, most of the original strips have been lost. Although, on the Everyday-Cut blog were many characters, the Pusheen become the most popular one. The first GIF was:

And now Pusheen has its own website, a few books, Facebook stickers, that often help us to express our feelings in more easy and lovely manner. And probably it’s the most popular drawn cat (after the Hello Kitty, I suppose).

It’s the Russian illustrator, who wish to be incognito, like the world known Benksy. The only personal details that are available are that he’s 29 and he lives and works in Mosсow. The willing of anonymity he explains simply: it lets people be more objective, interested in his work, not himself, and he doesn’t intend to make money on these comics, just a hobby, that makes people happy, let them recognize themselves in his drawings. The main characters are cats and dogs, sometimes bears or birds appear too. The popularity drawings own because of theirs honesty and the everyday social topics: stereotypes, weather, main holidays, love and friendship, rest and work — are shown by the artist in his original manner in the series of sketches devoted to each of them.

Every girl can recognize herself at least in one, but probably in every, of Sarah’s comics. Those are not just daily-life-describing drawing, they are hilarious, cute, well-illustrated situations, that own over love by making us shout with the astonishment and admiration: “that’s so true!”.

The girl is telling stories from her life, not being afraid to seem strange or weak, she knows how to cope with the little and big problems, awkwardness or self-doubt and can teach you to succeed in that as well.

It is a Finnish comic strip, written and drawn by the comics’ artist Samuli Lintula under the pen name Samson. Lintula grew up in Finland, where he attended college for two semesters and managed to sell cartoons to Finnish magazines during that time. In 1994 after dropping out of college, he begins contributing to the Finnish cartoon magazine Myrkky, which he continued until its discontinuation in 2008.

In 2008, he has the idea for Dark Side of the Horse. The horse is called Horace. He’s sarcastic, funny and silly, although sometimes getting smart ideas:

So cute unfortunate big blue yeti is the way how his artist Nick Seluksees himself. Unless, yeti’s name is Lars. Also, a part of Nick’s work become very popular Heart and Brain comic — two characters among many other organs and appendages with faces and spot-on character qualities.

I started The Awkward Yeti webcomic near the end of 2012 when I finally caught up with the rest of the world and realized I could do comics without having to get approval from anyone else. I have loved cartooning my entire life (although I never got too good at the art aspect) and was just excited to be able to share my work with people on a larger scale than my friends in middle school or my coworkers.

These comics are funny, cute, insightful or even dramatic, but in easy way they describe and explain lots of situations, that we experience from day to day or the things that happen with our body or thoughts.

She, her pet pug and their life are the main topics of the illustrations. Although, someone can tell that they are too simple or naive, there are many details to look through, good ideas and cool stories hidden beside them. Her illustration clients include Hallmark, The New York Times, Oxford University Press, Knock Knock, Chronicle Books and The Observer. None the less there are also many negative comments about Gemma’s work, but she intentionally posts them on her blog, and keeps doing things, she loves.

It’s very easy to follow Gemma, because she has accounts almost in every social network, also she leads the blog and has already published a few books with her drawings. No wonder: she has so much to tell about, and besides who doesn’t love pugs – one of the main characters in her comics and the source of the plenty of funny plots.

These comics about family life draws Lunarbaboon, which is, obviously, the nickname of the author, who hide his personality. All over the internet you’ll not find much information about him, although he actively answers on his Facebook page for the numerous of comments for his work. This is the series of pictures, that describe the family life of the Lunarbaboon — happy husband and father, who loves his family and tries to express that feeling in everything that he is doing.

Perhaps, because of the ironic and non-ordinary view of everyday life, he is very popular and there are communities that translate his work into their native languages.

Comics about lazy lasagna-loving, so cute and funny cat, is the most popular work of the American cartoonist Jim Davis. Not many people know that originally he intended to focus on Jon, but he was advised to pay more attention to the cat. Cat’s design changed several times from the beginning till nowadays. The main Garfield’s feature is making fun of his owner Jim, and we must admit that he does that masterly, with his adorable manner and that builds the main topic for the comics.

One more interesting fact:

In Sweden, Garfield is known as Gustav, — the Garfield creator says. There are only three countries in the whole world where he’s not Garfield and they’re all in the Nordics. The other two are Norway and Finland.

Everyone has one or even few weird fears, superstitions, believes — call them, how you prefer — often they are so absurd, that we tell them to none, afraid to seem strange or insane. But the artist of the series of comics, named Deep dark fears, opens all of them. Fran Krause encourages to send him your most stupid fears to visualize them, because showing ones, makes people feel themselves more secure, ensures
that they are normal and that happens to everyone, also visualization helps to beat your worries, — convinces Fran.